No, I didn’t position my fingers
wrong on the keyboard. It doesn’t quite have the flow of “Merry Christmas”, but
I’m told that’s the way the Iroquois say it. Turns out most Native American
tribes don’t have a term for “Happy Thanksgiving”.

Just as they have different ways of
saying it, people around the world have different ways of celebrating the
holiday season. Just to give you an idea, I looked up some of the ways
Christmas is celebrated around the world.

For
instance, South Africans often have an open-air lunch for Christmas. It’s
summer down there, after all.

Try an open-air meal here in the
Midwest for Christmas and you’ll spend the rest of the holidays getting thawed
out.

And yet South Africans don’t hang
bikinis from their nonexistent fireplaces; just like up here, children hang
stockings, probably from the air conditioner.

In Ghana, Christmas season coincides
with the cocoa harvest, so for them it’s a time of profit while they also make
the rest of the world very happy.

Like here they have a big meal, with
includes such items as okra soup and a yam paste, called fufu. Fruitcake
doesn’t sound so silly now, does it?

On the subject of food, Alaskan
holiday treats involve maple-frosted doughnuts and – yum! – piruk, also known
as fish pie. After eating the pie some adventurous young Alaskans indulge in
the dangerous sport of breathing on polar bears.

In Australia, Santa often arrives on
a surfboard or a boat. I mean along the coast, of course. Australians have a
Christmas Bush, a native plant with little red flowered leaves, which knowing
that place is probably poisonous. They have a Christmas pudding with a treat
baked into it, and if you find it you get good luck. Back during the gold
rushes Down Under, those treats often consisted of gold nuggets. Break your
teeth on those and … you don’t mind.

In Austria, the beginning of
Christmas is marked by the feast of St. Nicholas. Nick would go around asking
children for a list of their good and bad deeds … while accompanied by the
devil. I can’t help thinking the kids took that pretty seriously.

Not to be outdone, Belgium has two
Santa Claus ... Claus’s … Clauses … Santas. One is St. Niklaas, the other Pere
Noel. They often get into WWF style cage fights to determine which gets to
drive the sleigh.

No, actually Pere Noel goes to those
who speak the Walloon language, which is kind of like the Balloon language only
not so inflated. He goes first on December 4th, on what amounts to a
welfare visit, then returns on December 6th to bring presents to
good kids, and twigs to bad one. What happens to bad kids who want twigs, I don’t know.

St. Niklaas goes to the part of the
country called “Flemish”, where they speak Dutch instead of French. It’s kind
of like the difference between speakers in Massachusetts and South Carolina, in
that they live in the same country but can’t understand each other. But St.
Nicholas isn’t there to celebrate Jesus’ birth – he delivers presents on
December 6th, his own birthday. I guess Christmas itself must be
pretty anticlimactic.

On the other side of that, in Egypt and
Ethiopia Christmas is celebrated on January 7th. I’d imagine they’re
pretty darned sick of Christmas songs by then.

In Brazil, they believe Papai Noel
comes from Greenland, which as we all know is white. But when he comes down to
South America he wears silk clothing – remember, summer down there. The surfer
shorts and Hawaiian shirts are a bit jarring, and more than once he’s come
close to getting his sandal-clad feet smashed by reindeer hooves.

Bulgarians make Christmas wishes
around the fire while eating blood sausage. You heard that right.

Canadian celebrations are more or
less similar to those in the US, except Canadians traditionally sit around
practicing their politeness and comparing frostbite scars.

However, in Nova Scotia there are
wandering hoards of masked mummers (also a movie starring Brendon Fraser), who
go around making noise and daring people to guess who they are. On the other
side of the continent, Eskimos (who are no longer called that) have a big
winter festival called Sinck tuck, in which they dance around a fire made of
sleighs, Santa outfits, and pretty much anything else that will burn.

In Costa Rica, models of the stable
where Jesus was born are so big they fill an entire room. They would then have
room for the animals, which I’m sure would make it more realistic but also a
nightmare for the cleanup crew.

The Czech Republic is where the good
King
Wenceslas, famed in song and story (well, one song), comes from. His Christian
beliefs and overall goodness infuriated his mother, who apparently thought he
wasn’t bloodthirsty enough (maybe she should have fed him blood sausages?) so
her other son murdered him on the church steps. You won’t find this in modern
day Christmas TV specials.

On Christmas Eve in Denmark, parents
secretly decorate the tree with homemade wood and straw baubles, which you can
now order with free delivery from Amazon.com.

For Christmas in England, it
traditionally rains.

In France kids leave their wooden
shoes, called sabots, in the hearth to be filled. Sometimes they’re left too
close to the flames and catch fire. This leaves Pere Noel scorched and
believing it was done on purpose, an act that to this day is called sabotage.

And finally, Christmas in the Bethlehem
is … kind of traditional.

However you celebrate Christmas,
make it a fun one and, as they say in the Philippines: Maligayang Pasko at
Manigong Bagong Taon!

For those of you who might be around northeast Indiana, I should have a short story in the Christmas insert for this week's Albion New Era, Churubusco News, and Northwest News. The story features characters from three of my works: Storm Chaser, Storm Chaser Shorts, and The Notorious Ian Grant, although it's not directly connected.

In "Another Family", Indiana State Trooper Chance Hamlin and Police Detective Fran Vargas are headed home for the holidays when they encounter a snowstorm ... and inside it, something -- or someone -- much more unexpected.

Don't worry, I will be posting this story at all my usual places -- during Christmas, 2014! After all, it's the newspaper that pays me, so I like to send business their way.

We drove
down to IPFW tonight for Emily’s last classroom session (she still has a final
test coming up). The roads were so-so, and will probably be worse on the way
home; I think my annual prediction of a very bad winter is going to come true,
this year.

I’m going
to miss this place … of course, I didn’t have tests. I’m taking
advantage of her classroom time to do some final polishing of Radio Red before it goes out to –
somebody.

I haveLateralEpicondylitis!
The doctors say I might not make it, and that I should start making out
my will and testament, maybe sooner rather than later. If only I hadn't
eaten that strange green stuff during my trip to Mexico ...

Oh,
who am I kidding? It's still just tendonitis. It's flared up and won't go
away for some reason, but it's not serious, just painful. They gave me a shot of
something -- and not in my arm, if you catch my drift -- and told me to
take ibuprofen, put greasy stuff and heat on it (the elbow, not the
ibuprofen), and don't do any heavy lifting or work. Apparently
keyboarding isn't a problem, so I maintain my wild and crazy lifestyle.

But
considering the time of year, I was a little curious about how I was going
to shovel snow on my sidewalk and driveway. By curious, I mean worried.
It was suggested I buy ice-melt chemicals by the ton, but that seemed
like cheating ... besides, the doc told me to cut down on salt.

I figured I could do it by mostly just using my left arm, which is of course a recipe for disaster, and after it stopped snowing last night I grabbed the lighter of my two snow shovels and headed out. There I discovered someone with a snowblower had made a path along the length of the sidewalk in front of my house, and up my front walk all the way to the steps.

Then I went around to the driveway, which I saw had been completely plowed except for the concrete pad where the car was parked.

For the first I suspect one neighbor, as I spotted a snowblower on his front porch. For the second I suspect my other neighbor (who I share the driveway with), because there was a skidloader parked behind his house. My part of the task ended up being considerably less than I expected, which is good because my arm will never heal if I keep heading out to do dumb things.

Your confusion could be
understandable, especially if you’re not on the internet much. (Are there many
people besides my grandmother who aren’t on the internet?) The good news is
that if you don’t know these terms … you’re probably better off.

So what are they? Do you order two
more selfies for the road? Is a twerk a pair of high school nerds? Is either
one something you’d better do with the curtains closed and the door locked? Can
you have a selfie twerk?

(Turns out you can.)

Most important, why are we even
having this conversation?

The answer to that last is easy: The
Oxford Dictionary has legitimized selfie by making it the 2013 word of the
year, while twerk came in a close second.

Who gives the folks at Oxford the
right to decide what should be added to the English language? Well … they do, I
guess.

There were other runners-up,
including bedroom tax. This has to do with a change in the British welfare
system that penalizes people who the government decides have too much room. Apparently
some people listed such things as blisters and acne to explain why they were
unable to work (and needed taxpayer money) so they overhauled the system.

I say, it depends on where the
blister is.

Another “word” that’s actually two
is binge-watch, the process of watching multiple TV episodes of the same show
in a short time. I’ve been guilty of this starting as far back as Buffy the Vampire Slayer … luckily for
my health, my wife likes all the same shows I do but doesn’t like to watch too
much TV at a time. Other people are apparently moving entertainment centers
into their bathrooms.

Then there’s Schmeat, also known as
synthetic meat, which apparently is made out of petroleum oil, or something
worse.

Another is bitcoin, a digital
currency, which in reality doesn’t have any value but is treated as if it does.
Kind of like the American dollar.

Then there’s olinguito, a South
American mammal used to make schmeat and bitcoins, which in the wild has been
known to twerk.

Certainly twerk is the best known of
the runners-up, thanks to a former child performer-turned sleazy sexpothead
(that’s a word I just coined) named Miley Cyrus. (Sexpothead … I like it.)
Miley – I feel she’s on a first name basis with everyone – did what appeared to
be a deep squat exercise while attempting to lick the face of a fan in row
eight.

Some people are calling that a
dance.

Nobody knows for sure where the word
came from, but its technical description is shaking the hips in an up and down
bouncing motion, causing the dancer’s … um … bottom to shake, wobble and
bounce. Some people find this arousing, apparently. I missed Miley’s
performance, but for this column I watched a video of it.

Let’s move on to the winner, selfie.
It may be a little silly, but unlike twerk it doesn’t make me feel like I need
to shower.

Selfie is a term that simply means
taking a photograph of yourself. That’s it, although it usually also means that
photo ending up on the internet. Rule number one of posting photos on the
internet: Don’t do it while drunk.

According to Yahoo News, the very
authority on something, the first known use of the term came from an Australian
online forum post in 2002:

"Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer and landed lip first (with
front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about
1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a
selfie."

Pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?
I’m happy to say a photo did not accompany that quote.

Apparently Australians have a thing
for changing words to end with ie … i.e., “Put a shrimp on the barbie, but
don’t drink too many tinnies of beer or the firies might have to come put out
the flames.” Kinda scarie.

In 2012 the word exploded, and since
then we’ve been bombarded with photos people take of themselves, or themselves
with their friends, their pets, their cars, celebrities, or twerkers. There’s
been a 17,000 percent increase in the usage of that word, which is what caught
Oxford’s attention.

Selfies can be silly, but I don’t
criticize the photo takers much (as long as they’re not twerking at the time).
Why? Because I take selfies myself. I can count on one hand the number of
photos of myself I like – ever – and yet I’m constantly taking photos of me, my
wife, the dog, or all at once, often accompanied by a huge thing along the side
that can only be my arm. It’s fun, and I no longer have to pay for film.
Narcissistic, you say?

Yeah, but at least I’m not twerking.

I tried once.

I got over it thanks to ibuprofen, my
chiropractor, and a deep sense of shame.

Here’s a snippet from the
opening of Bar Fight, the third story
in my collection, Storm Chaser Shorts.
The story’s being told by State Trooper Chance Hamlin, about one of the main
characters in my upcoming novel, The Notorious
Ian Grant:

Bar Fight

“I can remember the first moment I knew Fran Vargas
would someday make detective. I’d answered a report of a disturbance at a bar,
one of those downtown holes in the wall with a door, a plate glass window, and
a tiny parking lot in the back. A few minutes earlier some guy showed up at the
police station downtown, his face a bloody pulp, to claim he’d gotten jumped
for no reason as he left the bar.